2004 Bethlehem killing of Bronx Latin King led to Lehigh Valley crime sweep

Gang's fears of snitching to police are highlighted in federal indictment.

Eugene Martinez was a Latin King from the Bronx. But when he was in the Lehigh Valley, rolling with another King's court, his out-of-state crown meant nothing.

Martinez began the Friday night of Jan. 9, 2004, drinking in a Bethlehem bar with four other men, including Neftali "King Nefti" Colon and Oscar "King Flip" Hernandez, described by authorities as members of the Bethlehem Sun Tribe of Chicago-based Latin Kings. At an Allentown bar, where the party had moved, Martinez disrespected and fought Colon and another gang member.

Martinez, 32, did not make it home alive.

His body was found with a bullet in the head and leg before sunrise the following bitterly cold day on the side of Fire Lane along Saucon Park in Bethlehem.

"The Saucon Park murder was one of the main things that made us realize we had a gang issue in the city," Bethlehem police Lt. Mark DiLuzio said Thursday.

Martinez's homicide is featured prominently in a sweeping federal indictment unsealed Wednesday, charging Colon, Hernandez and 10 other men with racketeering and murder conspiracy as top officials of the Bethlehem Sun Tribe, which authorities said used "murder, kidnapping and assault" to consolidate "territory, power and profits." Twenty-three other men were charged with federal drug and weapons offenses, for a total of 35.

Assistant U.S. Attorney John Gallagher said Thursday one man was arrested in Las Vegas and another in Massachusetts. All told, authorities got nearly $1 million in weapons, cocaine, crack, heroin, crystal methamphetamine and other drugs off the street during the three-year joint probe.

Detention hearings will be held Friday and Monday in Philadelphia for 20 of the defendants rounded up in Wednesday's sweeps, which centered on Bethlehem and also hit Allentown and Easton, Gallagher said. Federal prosecutors will ask two magistrate judges to imprison all 20 until trial, he said. Meanwhile, Bethlehem police continue to search for four more suspects. DiLuzio declined to identify the men, but said two are wanted on federal charges and the other two on state charges.

The federal indictment is sprinkled with references to how leaders of the Bethlehem Sun Tribe used their bloody MO against people they thought had snitched to police about Martinez's killing, which led to the 2006 arrests and 2007 guilty pleas of Colon, Hernandez and another man.

"We investigated it as far as we could go and obtained certain convictions, but the investigation always continued," DiLuzio said.

After Martinez's death, police tracked the city's growing gang presence through graffiti and drugs. Bethlehem's special operations unit started a separate investigation into drugs and guns the same year Colon, Hernandez and Carl Lassiter, a confessed former member of the Bloods gang, pleaded guilty in Northampton County Court to conspiracy to commit homicide, DiLuzio said. As the case progressed, he said, police realized the Latin Kings gang was bigger than they had anticipated and if arrests were to be made, the federal racketeering act, known as RICO, might apply to the organized crime network.

Police called the FBI, and the FBI listened.

At Wednesday's news conference announcing the charges, Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli said that when he took office 19 years ago, federal authorities rarely helped local officials.

"We are seeing the impact of federal resources," he said.

Bethlehem police used the federal Route 222 Anti-Gang Initiative to meet with the FBI in 2007 and target the growing problem with the Latin Kings, Gallagher said.

The Lehigh Valley was one of six regions in the country awarded $2.5 million each by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2006 to combat gang problems, such as recruitment, violence and drugs. The initiative also gave local police greater access to federal resources, which included greater communication with the FBI.

"Bethlehem police identified the problem," Gallagher said. "So they teamed up with the FBI and took a bottom-up approach, getting information from officers on the street. It was really about the locals telling us what the chronic problems were in our jurisdiction."

Martinez's killing showed Bethlehem police how big of a problem they had with the Bethlehem Sun Tribe, which the indictment alleges was tied to the Chicago "motherland" of the Latin Kings through Philadelphia connections. The Bethlehem Sun Tribe followed the motherland's same written manifesto of rules, such as memorizing prayers, recording meeting minutes, issuing fines for tardiness and giving orders to "beat down on sight" members and outsiders who offend the gang.

Not even Luis Colon, 26, of Allentown, who as "King Respect" was the leader ("first crown" or "Inca") of the Bethlehem Sun Tribe, was immune to the rules, authorities say. On Nov. 25, 2007, the indictment states, he and his top lieutenant, Jesse "King Pride" Zayas, 27, of Bethlehem, received 90-second beatings for breaking some aspect of the code.